Lutel wot hit anymon,
hou love hym haveþ ybounde,
Þat for us oþe rode ron,
ant boht us wiþ is wounde.
Þe love of hym us haveþ ymaked sounde,
ant ycast þe grimly gost to grounde.
Ever & oo, nyht & day, he haveþ us in is þohte,
He nul nout leose þat he so deore bohte.
* * * * *
His deope wounde bledeþ fast,
of hem we ohte munne!
He haþ ous out of helle ycast,
ybroht us out of sunne;
ffor love of us his wonges waxeþ þunne,
His herte blod he [gh]af for al mon kunne.
Ever & oo, etc.
(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. In BÖDDEKER'S _Altenglische Dichtungen_,
p. 231.)
This early religious lyric is of interest as containing the first known
use of the five-stress couplet in English. Here it is only in a few
lines that the couplet occurs, and so sporadic an occurrence should
perhaps be regarded as due to nothing more than chance. See Schipper,
vol. i. p. 439, and ten Brink's _Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst_, p.
173 f. Ten Brink calls attention to another fairly regular five-stress
verse, found on p. 253 of Wright's _Political Songs_:
"For miht is riht, the loud is laweless."[19]
And, as for me, though that my wit be lyte,
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence;
And to hem yeve swich lust and swich credence,
That ther is wel unethe game noon
That from my bokes make me too goon,
But hit be other up-on the haly-day,
Or elles in the joly tyme of May;
Whan that I here the smale foules singe,
And that the floures ginne for to springe,
Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun!
Now have I therto this condicioun
That, of alle the floures in the mede,
Than love I most these floures whyte and rede,
Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun.
To them have I so greet affeccioun.
(CHAUCER: _Legend of Good Women_, Prologue, ll. 29-44. Text A. ab.
1385.)
A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a povre Persoun of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thoght and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche;
His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche.
Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversitee ful pacient;...
He wayted after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spyced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve.
(CHAUCER: Prologue to _Canterbury Tales_, ll. 477-484, 525-528. ab.
1385.)
With Chaucer we have the first deliberate use of the five-stress
couplet, in continuous verse, known to English poetry. His earliest use
of the pentameter line was in the _Compleynt to Pitee_ (perhaps written
about 1371), in the "rime royal" stanza; his earliest use of the
pentameter couplet was in the _Legend of Good Women_, usually dated
1385. From that time the measure became almost his only instrument, and
we find altogether in his poetry some 16,000 lines in the couplet,
besides some 14,000 more in rime royal. Too much praise cannot be given
Chaucer's use of the couplet. Although it was an experiment in English
verse, it has perhaps hardly been used since his time with greater
skill. He used a variety of cesuras (see ten Brink's monograph for the
enumeration of them), a very large number of feminine endings (such as
the still pronounced final-_e_ and similar syllables easily provided),
free inversions in the first foot and elsewhere, and many run-on lines
(in a typical 100 lines some 16 run-on lines and 7 run-on couplets
appearing). The total effect is one of combined freedom and mastery, of
fluent conversational style yet within the limits of guarded artistic
form. "Much more regularly than the French and Provençals, and yet
without pedantic stiffness, he made his verse advance with a sort of
iambic gait, and he was therefore able to give up and exchange for a
freer arrangement the immovable cesura, which these poets had always
made to coincide with a foot-ending." (Ten Brink, in _English
Literature_, Kennedy trans., vol. ii. p. 48.) On Chaucer's verse, see,
besides the monograph of ten Brink already cited, Lounsbury's _Studies
in Chaucer_, vol. iii. pp. 297 ff., and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 442 ff.
The common assumption is, that Chaucer borrowed the pentameter
couplet directly from French poetry. On the history of this in
France, see Stengel, in Gröber's _Grundriss der Romanischen
Philologie_.[20] The decasyllabic verse was fairly common in France
in the fourteenth century (being called "_vers commun_" according to
Stengel); but in the form of the couplet it was not. Professor
Skeat says: "To say that it [Chaucer's couplet] was derived from the
French ten-syllable verse is not a complete solution of the mystery;
for nearly all such verse is commonly either in stanzas, or else a
great number of successive lines are rimed together; and these, I
believe, are rather scarce. After some search I have, however,
fortunately lighted upon a very interesting specimen, among the
poems of Guillaume de Machault, a French writer whom Chaucer is
known to have imitated, and who died in 1377. In the edition of
Machault's poems edited by Tarbé, Reims and Paris, 1849, p. 89,
there is a poem of exactly this character, of no great length, but
fortunately dated; for its title is 'Complainte écrite après la
bataille de Poitiers et avant le siège de Reims par les Anglais'
(1356-1358). The first four lines run thus:
"'A toy, Henry, dous amis, me complain,
Pour ce que ne cueur ne mont ne plein;
Car a piet suy, sans cheval et sans selle,
Et si n'ay mais esmeraude, ne belle.'
... Now as Chaucer was taken prisoner in France in 1359, he had an
excellent opportunity for making himself acquainted with this poem,
and with others, possibly, in a similar metre, which have not come
down to us." (_The Prioress's Tale_, Introduction, pp. xix, xx.)
Paris has shown that the real date of the poem in question was
1340; the title quoted by Skeat is Tarbé's modern French caption.
Professor Kittredge has called my attention to the fact that there
is another poem of Machault's in the same metre (P. Paris's edition
of _Voir-Dit_, p. 56), and also a poem by Froissart, the "Orloge
Amoureus."
Ten Brink calls attention to the possibility of the influence upon
Chaucer's couplet of the Italian hendecasyllabic verse. The
_Compleynte to Pitee_, it is true, was written probably before the
Italian journey of 1372-1373; but in Italy the "full significance"
of the metre may have become clear to Chaucer. "After that journey
the heroic verse appears almost exclusively as his poetic
instrument.... Of still greater significance is the fact that
Chaucer's heroic verse differs from the French decasyllabic in all
the particulars in which the Italian hendecasyllabic departs from
the common source, and approaches the verse of Dante and Boccaccio
as closely as the metre of a Germanic language can approach a
Romance metre. It may be added also that the heroic verse in the
_Compleynte to Pitee_ stands nearer the French decasyllabic than
that of the _Troilus_ or the _Canterbury Tales_."
Dr. Lewis, on the other hand, in _The Foreign Sources of English
Versification_, would minimize the foreign sources of Chaucer's
couplet. Not only the unaccentual character of the French verse is
opposed to the theory of the French source, but also, he believes,
the fixed cesura. "In the English verse there is no such thing:
indeed there is no cesura at all, in the French sense of the
word.... Schipper relegates to a foot-note the suggestion that our
heroic verse may have originated in a different way, either through
an abridgment of the alexandrine or through an extension of the
four-foot line. This is of course more nearly the true view, but it
is entirely immaterial which of the last two explanations we hit
upon. Accentual verses of four, six, and seven feet were already
familiar long before Chaucer's time. They exhibited a more or less
regular alternation of arsis and thesis. To devise a verse which
should be essentially the same in principle, but should have five
accents instead of four, six, or seven, was a task that Chaucer's
genius might well achieve unaided" (pp. 98, 99).
It is quite possible that a combination of all these views may be
nearest the truth. The objection to the French influence on the
ground of the syllabic (non-accentual) quality of the French verse
does not seem to be serious, since any imitation of French verse by
an Englishman would be likely to take on the accentual form; and,
that once done, the need for the fixed cesura would vanish. But it
is worth while to emphasize the fact that the genius of English
verse was not so averse to the formation of a decasyllabic
five-stress line as to make it a serious innovation. This view is
further emphasized by the next specimen.
Is not thilke the mery moneth of May,
When love-lads masken in fresh aray?
How falles it, then, we no merrier bene,
Ylike as others, girt in gawdy greene?
Our bloncket liveryes bene all to sadde
For thilke same season, when all is ycladd
With pleasaunce: the grownd with grasse, the Woods
With greene leaves, the bushes with bloosming buds.
... Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,
To fetchen home May with their musicall:
And home they bringen in a royall throne,
Crowned as king: and his Queene attone
Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend
A fayre flocke of Faeries, and a fresh bend
Of lovely Nymphs. (O that I were there,
To helpen the Ladyes their Maybush beare!)
Ah! Piers, bene not thy teeth on edge, to thinke
(SPENSER: _The Shepherd's Calendar, May_. 1579.)
This specimen is properly not in five-stress verse, but in irregular
four-stress ("tumbling verse"); compare the specimen on p. 158, above.
We have a close approach, however, to the regular five-stress verse, in
such lines as the fourth, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth.
On this and similar passages in the _Shepherd's Calendar_, as
illustrating the close relation between the native measure and the newer
one, see an article by Professor Gummere, in the _American Journal of
Philology_, vol. vii. pp. 53ff. Other verses cited by Dr. Gummere are:
"Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce."
"And dirks the beauty of my blossomes rownd."
"That oft the blood springeth from woundes wyde."
"There at the dore he cast me downe hys pack."
It is pointed out that the regular five-stress line, when having--as
very frequently--only four full stresses (two or three light syllables
coming together, especially at the pause), can hardly be distinguished
from certain forms of the native four-stress verse. See also the
Eclogues for February and August, in the _Shepherd's Calendar_. Dr.
Gummere's conclusion is, that "practically all the elements of
Anglo-Saxon verse are preserved in our modern poetry, though in
different combinations, with changed proportional importance."
But the false Fox most kindly played his part;
For whatsoever mother-wit or art
Could work, he put in proof: no practice sly,
No counterpoint of cunning policy,
No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring,
But he the same did to his purpose wring....
He fed his cubs with fat of all the soil,
And with the sweet of others' sweating toil;
He crammed them with crumbs of benefices,
And fill'd their mouths with meeds of malefices.
... No statute so established might be,
Nor ordinance so needful, but that he
Would violate, though not with violence,
Yet under color of the confidence
The which the Ape repos'd in him alone,
And reckon'd him the kingdom's corner-stone.
(SPENSER: _Mother Hubbard's Tale_, ll. 1137-1166. 1591.)
Spenser's use of the heroic couplet for the _Mother Hubbard's Tale_ is
the earliest instance of its adoption in English for satirical verse,--a
purpose for which its later history showed it to be peculiarly well
fitted.
Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath,
From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath:
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,
Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives:
Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,
When 'twas the odor which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.
About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,
Which, lighten'd by her neck, like diamonds shone.
(MARLOWE: _Hero and Leander_, ll. 17-26. ab. 1590, pub. 1598.)
Too popular is tragic poesy,
Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee,
And doth beside on rimeless numbers tread;
Unbid iambics flow from careless head.
Some braver brain in high heroic rhymes
Compileth worm-eat stories of old times:
And he, like some imperious Maronist,
Conjures the Muses that they him assist.
Then strives he to bombast his feeble lines
With far-fetch'd phrase.-- ...
Painters and poets, hold your ancient right:
Write what you will, and write not what you might:
Their limits be their list, their reason will.
But if some painter in presuming skill
Should paint the stars in centre of the earth,
Could ye forbear some smiles, and taunting mirth?
(JOSEPH HALL: _Virgidemiarum Libri VI._, bk. i. satire 4. 1597.)
Joseph Hall was the most vigorous satirist of the group of Elizabethans
who, in the last decade of the sixteenth century, were imitating the
satires of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. Hall's satires have a curiously
eighteenth-century flavor, and his couplets are frequently very similar
to those of the age of Pope. Thus Thomas Warton (in his _History of
English Poetry_) observed of Hall that "the fabric of the couplets
approaches to the modern standard;" and Anderson, who edited the
_British Poets_ in 1795, said: "Many of his lines would do honor to the
most harmonious of our modern poets. The sense has generally such a
pause, and will admit of such a punctuation at the close of the second
line, as if it were calculated for a modern ear." On the verse of these
Elizabethan satirists in general, see _The Rise of Formal Satire in
England_, by the present editor (_Publications of the Univ. of Penna_.).
On the other hand, the verse of the satires of John Donne, from which
the following specimen is taken, is the roughest and most difficult of
all the satires of the group. The reputation of Donne's satires for
metrical ruggedness has affected unjustly that of his other poetry and
that of the Elizabethan satires in general. Dryden said: "Would not
Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if
he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?" (_Essay on Satire._)
And Pope "versified" two of them, so as to bring them into a form
pleasing to the ear of his age.
Therefore I suffered this: towards me did run
A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun
E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came:
A thing which would have posed Adam to name;
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies,
Than Afric's monsters, Guiana's rarities;...
Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been
Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen)
Become tufftaffaty; and our children shall
See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all.
This thing hath travelled, and faith, speaks all tongues,
And only knoweth what to all states belongs.
(JOHN DONNE: _Satire iv._ ll. 17 ff. ab. 1593.)
This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas,
And utters it again when God doth please.
He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares
At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve.
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.
He can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he
That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honorable terms: nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly, and, in ushering,
Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.
(SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, V. ii. 315-330. ab. 1590.)
The use of rimed couplets in Shakspere's dramas is especially
characteristic of his earlier work. In this play, _Love's Labor's Lost_,
Dowden says, "there are about two rhymed lines to every one of blank
verse" (_Shakspere Primer_, p. 44). In the late plays, on the other
hand, rime disappears almost altogether. It will be observed that while
Shakspere's heroic verse is usually fairly regular, with not very many
run-on lines, it yet differs in quality from that of satires. The
dramatic use moulds it into different cadences, and the single couplet
is, perhaps, less noticeably the unit of the verse.
Shepherd, I pray thee stay. Where hast thou been?
Or whither goest thou? Here be woods as green
As any; air likewise as fresh and sweet
As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams; with flowers as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbors o'ergrown with woodbines, caves, and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,--
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest.
(FLETCHER: _The Faithful Shepherdess_, I. iii. ab. 1610.)
Fletcher uses the couplet in this drama with a freedom hardly found
elsewhere until the time of Keats; see the remark of Symonds, quoted p.
210, below.
If Rome so great, and in her wisest age,
Fear'd not to boast the glories of her stage,
As skilful Roscius, and grave Æsop, men,
Yet crown'd with honors, as with riches, then;
Who had no less a trumpet of their name
Than Cicero, whose every breath was fame:
How can so great example die in me,
That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee?
Who both their graces in thyself hast more
Outstript, than they did all that went before:
And present worth in all dost so contract,
As others speak, but only thou dost act.
Wear this renown. 'Tis just, that who did give
So many poets life, by one should live.
(BEN JONSON: _Epigram LXXXIX, to Edward Allen._ 1616.)
Jonson is thought by some to have been the founder of the classical
school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made the
heroic couplet peculiarly its own. See on this subject an article by
Prof. F. E. Schelling, "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," in the
_Publications of the Modern Language Association_, n. s. vol. vi. p.
221. Professor Schelling finds in Jonson's verse all the characteristics
of the later couplet of Waller and Dryden: end-stopped lines and
couplets, a preference for medial cesura, and an antithetical structure
of the verse. "No better specimen of Jonson's antithetical manner could
be found," he says further, than the Epigram here quoted. So far as this
antithetical quality of Jonson's verse is concerned, Professor
Schelling's view cannot be questioned; but that Jonson shows any
singular preference for end-stopped lines and couplets may be seriously
questioned.
These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge,
Proud with the burden of so brave a charge,
With painted oars the youths begin to sweep
Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep;
Which soon becomes the seat of sudden war
Between the wind and tide that fiercely jar.
As when a sort of lusty shepherds try
Their force at football, care of victory
Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast,
That their encounters seem too rough for jest;
They ply their feet, and still the restless ball,
Tossed to and fro, is urged by them all:
So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds,
And like effect of their contention finds.
(WALLER: _Of the Danger his Majesty [being Prince] escaped in the Road
at St. Andrews._ 1623?)
Such is the mould that the blest tenant feeds
On precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds;
With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,
On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,
And with potatoes fat their wanton swine;
Nature these cates with such a lavish hand
Pours out among them, that our coarser land
Tastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,
Which not for warmth but ornament is worn;
For the kind spring, which but salutes us here,
Inhabits there and courts them all the year;
Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live,
At once they promise what at once they give;
So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives, or dies before his time....
O how I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantain's shade, and all the day
With amorous airs my fancy entertain,
Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!
(WALLER: _The Battle of the Summer Islands_, canto i. 1638.)
Edmund Waller is the chief representative of the early classical poetry
of the seventeenth century, and of the polishing and regulating of the
couplet which prepared the way for the verse of Dryden and Pope. The
dominant characteristic of this verse is its avoidance of _enjambement_,
or run-on lines, still more of run-on couplets. The growing precision of
French verse at the same time was perhaps influential in England.
Malherbe, who was at the French court after 1605, set rules for more
regular verse, and forbade, among other things, the use of run-on
lines--a precept which held good in French poetry until the nineteenth
century. The influence of Waller in England was, for a considerable
period, hardly less than that of Malherbe in France. Dryden said that
"the excellence and dignity" of rime "were never known till Mr. Waller
taught it; he first made writing easily an art; first showed us to
conclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of
those before him, runs on for so many lines together that the reader is
out of breath to overtake it. This sweetness of Mr. Waller's lyric poesy
was afterward followed, in the epic, by Sir John Denham, in his
_Cooper's Hill_." (Epistle Dedicatory of _The Rival Ladies_.) In another
place Dryden observed that only Waller, in English, had surpassed
Spenser in the harmony of his verse. Dryden's view was later echoed by
Pope, who exhorted his readers to
"praise the easy vigor of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join."
(_Essay on Criticism_, l. 360.)
But the most remarkable praise of Waller is found in the Preface to his
posthumous poems, 1690, generally attributed to Bishop Atterbury. "He
was indeed the parent of English verse, and the first that shewed us our
tongue had beauty and numbers in it.... The tongue came into his hands
like a rough diamond; he polished it first, and to that degree that all
artists since him have admired the workmanship, without pretending to
mend it.... He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners, and for
aught I know, last, too; for I question whether in Charles the Second's
reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has
not had its Augustan Age, as well as the Latin.... We are no less
beholding to him for the new turn of verse, which he brought in, and the
improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time men rhymed, indeed,
and that was all: as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words
which good ears are so much pleased with, they knew nothing of it. Their
poetry then was made up almost entirely of monosyllables, which, when
they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh,
untunable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read
ten lines in Donne, and he'll quickly be convinced. Besides, their
verses ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole
copy, like the _hook't atoms_ that compose a body in Des Cartes. There
was no distinction of parts, no regular stops, nothing for the ear to
rest upon. But as soon as the copy began, down it went like a larum,
incessantly; and the reader was sure to be out of breath before he got
to the end of it. So that really verse in those days was but downright
prose, tagged with rhymes. Mr. Waller removed all these faults, brought
in more polysyllables and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts
better and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verse he
wrote in: so that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived
the little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with 'em. And for
that reason, since the stress of our verse lies commonly upon the last
syllable, you'll hardly ever find him using a word of no force
there."[21] Waller's editor thus clearly discerns the very
characteristics of his verse which are avoided by the master-poets--the
coincidence of phrase-pauses and verse-pauses, and regularity in the
placing of stress.
The most important discussion of the influence of Waller on English
poetry, and on the heroic couplet in particular, is found in Mr. Gosse's
book, _From Shakespeare to Pope_. Mr. Gosse regards Waller as inventing
for himself the couplet of the classical school; "master," in 1623, of
such verse as "was not imitated by a single poet for nearly twenty
years" (p. 50). This view is criticised in an interesting article by Dr.
Henry Wood, in the _American Journal of Philology_, vol. xi. p. 55.
While Mr. Gosse places Waller's earliest couplets in 1621 and 1623, Dr.
Wood would date them as late as 1626, and shows that Waller wrote
nothing else until 1635. Meantime had appeared (the first volume at
least as early as 1623) the translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, by
George Sandys, in which, says Wood, all the characteristics of Waller's
verse appear. "At all events," is his conclusion, "it was Sandys, and
not Waller, who at the beginning of the third decade of the century,
first of all Englishmen, made a uniform practice of writing in heroic
couplets, which are, on the whole, in accord with the French rule, and
which, for exactness of construction, and for harmonious sification, go
far towards satisfying the demands of the later 'classical' school in
England." Dr. Wood emphasizes the probable influence of the French poets
on these early heroic couplets, calling attention to the fact that
Sandys was in France in 1610. There is no evidence, however, that he was
there for more than a few days, _en route_ to more eastern countries.
Waller was not in France till 1643. The whole question of the influence
of French poetry in England before the Restoration still remains to be
carefully investigated. Meantime, the cautious student will hesitate to
put too much stress on any single point of departure for the new style
of versification. Many influences must have combined to make it popular.
We have seen Professor Schelling emphasizing the influence of Jonson; he
also very justly points out "that it is a mistake to consider that the
Elizabethans often practised the couplet with the freedom, not to say
license, that characterizes its nineteenth century use in the hands of
such poets as Keats." Compare the couplets of even so romantic a poet as
Marlowe, in the specimen given above from _Hero and Leander_. And even
Mr. Gosse, in partial divergence from the doctrines of _From Shakespeare
to Pope_, says of the satiric verse of the Elizabethan Rowlands: "There
are lines in this passage which Pope would not have disdained to use. It
might, indeed, be employed as against that old heresy, not even yet
entirely discarded, that smoothness of heroic verse was the invention of
Waller. As a matter of fact, this, as well as all other branches of the
universal art of poetry, was understood by the great Elizabethan
masters; and if they did not frequently employ it, it was because they
left to such humbler writers as Rowlands an instrument incapable of
those noble and audacious harmonies on which they chiefly prided
themselves." (Introduction to the _Works of Rowlands_, Hunterian Club
ed., p. 16.)
A tribute to the incoming influence of the couplet is cited by Dr. Wood
from the poems of Sir John Beaumont (1582-1627). In his verses _To His
Late Majesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry_, Beaumont
said:
"In every language now in Europe spoke
By nations which the Roman empire broke,
The rellish of the Muse consists in rime,
One verse must meete another like a chime....
In many changes these may be exprest,
But those that joyne most simply run the best:
Their forme surpassing farre the fetter'd staves,
Vaine care, and needlesse repetition saves."
(CHALMER'S _English Poets_, vol. vi. p. 31.)[22]
Rough Boreas in Æolian prison laid,
And those dry blasts which gathered clouds invade,
Outflies the South with dropping wings; who shrouds
His terrible aspect in pitchy clouds.
His white hair streams, his swol'n beard big with showers;
Mists bind his brows, rain from his bosom pours.
As with his hands the hanging clouds he crushed,
They roared, and down in showers together rushed.
All-colored Iris, Juno's messenger,
To weeping clouds doth nourishment confer.
The corn is lodged, the husbandmen despair,
Their long year's labor lost, with all their care.
Jove, not content with his ethereal rages,
His brother's auxiliaric floods engages.
(GEORGE SANDYS: _Ovid's Metamorphoses_, bk. i. 1621.)
On the significance of Sandys's verse, see preceding notes on Waller,
and the note on its possible relation to Pope, p. 201 below.
My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames amongst the wanton valleys strays;
Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity....
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,
But godlike his unwearied bounty flows,
First loves to do, then loves the good he does;
Nor are his blessings to his banks confined,
But free and common as the sea or wind....
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
(SIR JOHN DENHAM: _Cooper's Hill_. 1642.)
"Denham," says Mr. Gosse, "was the first writer to adopt the precise
manner of versification introduced by Waller." (Ward's _English Poets_,
vol. ii. p. 279.) On his praise by Dryden and Pope, see notes on p. 188
above. The last four lines of the specimen here given have been
universally admired.
But say, what is't that binds your hands? does fear
From such a glorious action you deter?
Or is't religion? But you sure disclaim
That frivolous pretence, that empty name;
Mere bugbear word, devis'd by us to scare
The senseless rout to slavishness and fear,
Ne'er known to awe the brave, and those that dare.
Such weak and feeble things may serve for checks
To rein and curb base-mettled heretics, ...
Such whom fond in-bred honesty befools,
Or that old musty piece, the Bible, gulls.
(JOHN OLDHAM: _Satires upon the Jesuits_, Sat. i. 1679.)
"Oldham was the first," says Mr. Gosse, "to liberate himself, in the use
of the distich, from this under-current of a stanza, and to write heroic
verse straight on, couplet by couplet, ascending by steady strides and
not by irregular leaps. (Any one who will venture to read Oldham's
disagreeable _Satire upon the Jesuits_, written in 1679, will see the
truth of this remark, and note the effect that its versification had
upon that series of Dryden's satires which immediately followed it.) In
Pope's best satires we see this art carried to its final perfection;
after his time the connecting link between couplet and couplet became
lost, and at last in the decline poems became, as some one has said,
mere cases of lancets lying side by side. But in Dryden's day the
connection was still only too obvious, and it strikes me that it may
have been from a consciousness of this defect, that Dryden adopted that
triplet, with a final alexandrine, which he is so fond of introducing."
(_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 201.)
Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?...
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
(DRYDEN: _Absalom and Achitophel_, part I. ll. 150-179. 1681.)
Dryden was the first great English poet after Chaucer to make the heroic
couplet his chief vehicle of expression, and he put far more variety and
vigor into it than had been achieved by his nearer predecessors. As Pope
said:
"Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, the energy divine."
(_Epistle ii._, 267.)
And Gray, some years later, symbolized Dryden's couplet in these fine
lines of the _Progress of Poesy_:
"Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race,
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace."
On Dryden's development of the couplet, see especially Saintsbury's
_Life of Dryden_ (English Men of Letters Series), pp. 17, 171. "The
whole structure of the decasyllabic line before the middle of the
seventeenth century was ill calculated for the perfecting of the
couplet. Accustomed either to the stately plainness of blank verse, or
to the elaborate intricacies of the stanza, writers had got into the
habit of communicating to their verse a slow and somewhat languid
movement." (p. 17.) "In versification the great achievement of Dryden
was the alteration of what may be called the balance of the line,
causing it to run more quickly, and to strike its rhymes with a sharper
and less prolonged sound. One obvious means of obtaining this was, as a
matter of course, the isolation of the couplet, and the avoidance of
overlapping the different lines one upon the other. The effect of this
overlapping, by depriving the eye and voice of the expectation of rest
at the end of each couplet, is always one of two things. Either the
lines are converted into a sort of rhythmic prose, made musical by the
rhymes rather than divided by them, or else a considerable pause is
invited at the end of each, or of most lines, and the cadence of the
whole becomes comparatively slow and languid. Both these forms, as may
be seen in the works of Mr. Morris, as well as in the older writers, are
excellently suited for narration of some considerable length. They are
less well suited for satire, for argument, and for the moral reflections
which the age of Dryden loved. He therefore set himself to elaborate the
couplet with its sharp point, its quick delivery, and the pistol-like
detonation of its rhyme. But there is an obvious objection, or rather
there are several obvious objections which present themselves to the
couplet. It was natural that to one accustomed to the more varied range
of the older rhythm and metre, there might seem to be a danger of the
snip-snap monotony into which, as we know, it did actually fall when it
passed out of the hands of its first great practitioners. There might
also be a fear that it would not always be possible to compress the
sense of a complete clause within the narrow limits of twenty syllables.
To meet these difficulties Dryden resorted to three mechanical
devices--the hemistich, the alexandrine, and the triplet, all three of
which could be used indifferently to eke out the space or to give
variety of sound.... In poetry proper the hemistich is anything but
pleasing, and Dryden, becoming convinced of the fact, almost discarded
it. The alexandrine and the triplet he always continued to use." (pp.
171, 172.)
Do you remember, when their tasks were done,
How all the youth did to our cottage run?
While winter winds were whistling loud without,
Our cheerful hearth was circled round about:
With strokes in ashes, maids their lovers drew;
And still you fell to me, and I to you....
I know too well when first my love began,
When at our wake you for the chaplet ran:
Then I was made the lady of the May,
And, with the garland, at the goal did stay:
Still, as you ran, I kept you full in view;
I hoped, and wished, and ran, methought, for you.
As you came near, I hastily did rise,
And stretched my arm outright, that held the prize.
The custom was to kiss whom I should crown;
You kneeled, and in my lap your head laid down:
I blushed, and blushed, and did the kiss delay;
At last my subjects forced me to obey:
But, when I gave the crown, and then the kiss,
I scarce had breath to say, Take that,--and this.
(DRYDEN: _Marriage à la Mode_, II, i. 1672.)
The use of the heroic couplet in the drama marks its effort to conquer
the last citadel of English poetry; an attempt which, under the
leadership of Dryden, seemed to succeed, but soon gave way to better
judgment. Dryden favored the experiment in the Preface to _The Rival
Ladies_ (1663), and inserted a few couplets in that play. Etheredge
accepted the suggestion, and put the serious parts of _The Comical
Revenge_ (largely prose) into couplets, in 1664. In the same year _The
Indian Queen_ (by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard) appeared in heroic
verse, and the fashion soon became so general that in the _Essay on
Heroic Plays_, prefixed to _The Conquest of Granada_ (1672), Dryden
could say: "Whether Heroic Verse ought to be admitted into serious
plays, is not now to be disputed: 'tis already in possession of the
stage; and I dare confidently affirm, that very few tragedies, in this
age, shall be received without it." Only six years later, however, in
1678, he returned to blank verse in _All for Love_, saying: "I have
disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I condemn my former way, but
that this is more proper to my present purpose." In all about five
plays of Dryden's are in couplets; after 1678 he rarely returned to rime
for the drama. As Atterbury said in his Preface to Waller's poems:
"'Twas the strength of his genius that first brought it into credit in
plays; and 'tis the force of his example that has thrown it out again."
"The fashion of rhyme in the drama, then, to be exact," says Mr. Gosse,
"flourished from 1664 until ... 1678." Some justification for its use is
to be found in the wretched condition into which blank verse had fallen.
"The blank iambics of the romantic dramatists had become so execrably
weak and distended, the whole movement of dramatic verse had grown so
flaccid, that a little restraint in the severe limits of rhyme was
absolutely necessary." (Gosse, in _Seventeenth Century Studies_, p.
264.)
The present specimen is from a play in which the couplet was used but
slightly; but it shows Dryden's use of it at its best. In the drama, as
already remarked, the couplet is naturally less epigrammatic and pointed
than in didactic and satiric verse.
For the arguments with which Dryden defended the use of rime in the
drama, see the Preface to _The Rival Ladies_, the _Essay of Heroic
Plays_, the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, and the _Defence of an Essay
of Dramatic Poesy_. "In the quickness of reparties (which in
discoursive scenes fall very often), it has so particular a grace,
and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness of the
answer, and the sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each
other. But that benefit which I consider most in it, because I have
not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the
fancy." (_Essays of Dryden_, ed. W. P. Ker, vol. i. p. 8.) In the
_Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, Crites, representing Sir Robert Howard,
opposes the use of rime on the ground of Aristotle's dictum that
tragedy is best written in the kind of verse which is nearest
prose. A play being an imitation of Nature, "the nearer anything
comes to the imitation of it, the more it pleases." Neander,
representing Dryden, answers that this line of argument will
equally forbid blank verse. Blank verse is "properly but measured
prose"; and rime may be "made as natural as blank verse, by the
well placing of the words, etc." "But I need not go so far to prove
that rhyme, as it succeeds to all other offices of Greek and Latin
verse, so especially to this of plays, since the custom of all
nations at this day confirms it, all the French, Italian, and
Spanish tragedies are generally writ in it; and sure the universal
consent of the most civilized parts of the world ought in this, as
it doth in other customs, to include the rest." (_Ibid._ p. 98.)
Again, while a play is a representation of Nature, it is "Nature
wrought up to an higher pitch"; and for this purpose "heroic rhyme
is nearest Nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse." (pp.
100, 101.) In the _Essay of Heroic Plays_ Dryden again summarizes
the case for the other side by saying that "all the arguments which
are formed against it can amount to no more than this, that it is
not so near conversation as prose, and therefore not so natural.
But it is very clear to all who understand Poetry, that serious
plays ought not to imitate conversation too nearly." If, therefore,
we begin to leave the mere "imitation of ordinary converse," we
should go on consistently to "the last perfection of Art. It was
only custom which cozened us so long; we thought, because
Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of
poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described
passion without rhyme, therefore rhyme was not capable of
describing it. But time has now convinced most men of that error."
(_Ibid._ pp. 148, 149.)
Dryden was of course quite right in objecting to the claim that
imaginative poetry ought to seek the form closest to the language
of real life. The real question is whether rimed verse is a more
imaginative and highly poetic form than blank verse; modern opinion
would unanimously answer in the negative.
It strikes a modern reader as curious that Dryden and his
contemporaries should have advocated the use of rime in tragedy
rather than in comedy; but we have the clew to their feeling in the
saying that "_serious plays_ ought not to imitate conversation too
nearly." In the Restoration period the comedy was thought of as a
realistic representation of life; hence its characters should speak
in natural prose, as they have continued to do, for the most part,
ever since. The tragedy or heroic play, on the other hand, was in
the region of artistic convention, much farther removed from
reality; hence its language was to be "raised above the life." This
distinction between the range of comedy and that of tragedy, which
would have seemed strange to the Elizabethans, explains the widely
diverging lines which we find the two forms of the drama following
from the time of the Restoration.
On the verse of Dryden's rimed plays, see Schipper, vol. ii. p.
214, and O. Speerschneider's _Metrische Untersuchungen über den
heroischen Vers in John Drydens Dramen_ (Halle, 1897).
But O, my muse, what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join'd!
Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound,
The victor's shouts and dying groans confound,
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
And all the thunder of the battle rise.
'Twas then great Marlbro's mighty soul was prov'd,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov'd,
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examin'd all the dreadful scenes of war....
So, when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
(ADDISON: _The Campaign_. 1704.)
But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line;
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure return of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find 'the cooling western breeze,'
In the next line, it 'whispers through the trees';
If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep':
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigor of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.
(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 337-361. 1711.)
Why boast we, Glaucus, our extended reign
Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain,
Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield,
Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound?
Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed;
Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous powers above?
'Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace;
The first in valor, as the first in place:
That when with wondering eyes our martial bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,
Whom those that envy dare not imitate!
Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
The life which others pay let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honored if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give!
(POPE: _Iliad_, bk. xii.)
Pope's couplet, while less vigorous and varied than Dryden's, has been
generally considered the most perfect development of the typical measure
of the classical school. Mr. Courthope thinks that in this speech from
the _Iliad_, Pope "perhaps attains the highest level of which the heroic
couplet is capable." (_Works of Pope_, vol. v. p. 167.)
"What he learned from Dryden," Mr. Courthope says in another place,
"was the art of expressing the social and conversational idiom of
the language in a metrical form. His conception of metrical harmony
was, however, altogether different from his professed master's, and
rather resembled that of Sandys, whose translation of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_ he told Spence he had read when very young, and
with the greatest delight. He explains the system in a letter to
Cromwell, dated November 25, 1710.
"'(1) As to the hiatus, it is certainly to be avoided as often as
possible; but on the other hand, since the reason of it is only for
the sake of the numbers, so if, to avoid it, we incur another fault
against their smoothness, methinks the very end of that nicety is
destroyed....
"'(2) I would except against the use of all expletives in verse, as
_do_ before verbs plural, or even the frequent use of _did_ or
_does_ to change the termination of the rhyme....
"'(3) Monosyllable lines, unless very artfully managed, are stiff,
languishing, and hard.
"'(4) The repeating the same rhymes within four or six lines of
each other, which tire the ear with too much of the like sound.
"'(5) The too frequent use of alexandrines, which are never
graceful, but where there is some majesty added to the verse by
them, or when there cannot be found a word in them but what is
absolutely needful.
"'(6) Every nice ear must, I believe, have observed that in any
smooth English verse of ten syllables, there is naturally a pause
either at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllables.... Now I fancy
that, to preserve an exact harmony and variety, none of these
pauses should be continued above three lines together, without the
interposition of another; else it will be apt to weary the ear with
one continued tone.'"
(_Ibid._ pp. 20, 21.)
Here are implied all the characteristics of the Popean couplet. The
cesura is to vary, but not from a fundamentally medial position.
The avoidance of _enjambement_ is not mentioned, doubtless because
it is assumed as an essential of couplets professing any degree of
correctness.
Mr. Andrew Lang protests against the monotony of the verse of Pope's
_Iliad_ in some lines which cleverly adopt the same sort of measure:
My childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone,
And sought for Homer in the prose of Bohn.
Still through the dust of that dim prose appears
The flight of arrows and the sheen of spears;
Still we may trace what hearts heroic feel,
And hear the bronze that hurtles on the steel!
But ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence,
Where wits, not heroes, prove their skill in fence,
And great Achilles' eloquence doth show
As if no centaur trained him, but Boileau!
Again, your verse is orderly,--and more,--
"The waves behind impel the waves before";
Monotonously musical they glide,
Till couplet unto couplet hath replied.
But turn to Homer! How his verses sweep!
Surge answers surge and deep doth call on deep;
This line in foam and thunder issues forth,
Spurred by the West or smitten by the North,
Sombre in all its sullen deeps, and all
Clear at the crest, and foaming to the fall;
The next with silver murmur dies away,
Like tides that falter to Calypso's Bay!
(ANDREW LANG: _Letters to Dead Authors; Pope_.)
Compare with this the equally clever defence of Pope's verse by Mr.
Dobson:
Suppose you say your Worst of Pope, declare
His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre,
His Art but Artifice--I ask once more
Where have you seen such Artifice before?
Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd,
Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?
Where can you show, among your Names of Note,
So much to copy and so much to quote?
And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse,
A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?
So I, that love the old Augustan Days
Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase;
That like along the finish'd line to feel
The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel;
That like my Couplet as compact as clear;
That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe,
Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope,
I fling my Cap for Polish--and for POPE![23]
(AUSTIN DOBSON: _Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope_.)
Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below;
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.
(GOLDSMITH: _The Deserted Village_. 1770.)
"The heroic couplet," says Mr. Gosse, "was never employed, even by Pope
himself, with more melody than by Goldsmith in this poem." (_Eighteenth
Century Literature_, p. 320.) Its use at this time, when the revival of
blank verse by Thomson and others had seriously affected the prestige of
the couplet, was a sign of Goldsmith's reactionary tendency toward the
school of Pope. His dislike of blank verse he expressed in his early
work on the _Present State of Polite Learning_, saying that it might be
reckoned among "several disagreeable instances of pedantry" lately
proceeding "from a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of
ancient languages upon the English." (_Works_, Globe ed., p. 439.) This
opinion was of course shared by Goldsmith's friend, Dr. Johnson, whose
two important poems (_London_ and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_) stand
with the two of Goldsmith as the last notable pieces of English poetry
of the classical school. While Johnson admitted that he could not "wish
that Milton had been a rhymer," yet he never lost an opportunity to
speak contemptuously of blank verse as a poetic form, and quoted
approvingly the saying of a critic that it "seems to be verse only to
the eye." (_Life of Milton._)
In front of these came Addison. In him
Humor, in holiday and sightly trim,
Sublimity and Attic taste combined
To polish, furnish, and delight the mind.
Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,
In verse well-disciplined, complete, compact,
Gave virtue and morality a grace
That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face,
Levied a tax of wonder and applause,
Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.
But he (his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)
Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And every warbler has his tune by heart.
Nature imparting her satiric gift,
Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift,
With droll sobriety they raised a smile
At folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while.
That constellation set, the world in vain
Must hope to look upon their like again.
(COWPER: _Table Talk_. 1782.)
Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And tales of terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering folly loves a varied song,
To strange mysterious dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus Lays of Minstrels--may they be the last!--
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast;
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why.
(BYRON: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. 1809.)
View now the winter storm! above, one cloud,
Black and unbroken, all the skies o'ershroud:
The unwieldy porpoise through the day before
Had rolled in view of boding men on shore;
And sometimes hid and sometimes showed his form,
Dark as the cloud and furious as the storm.
All where the eye delights yet dreads to roam,
The breaking billows cast the flying foam
Upon the billows rising--all the deep
Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep,
Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells,
Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells....
Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind
Appals the weak and awes the firmer mind;
But frights not him whom evening and the spray
In part conceal--yon prowler on his way.
Lo, he has something seen; he runs apace,
As if he feared companion in the chase;
He sees his prize, and now he turns again,
Slowly and sorrowing--"Was your search in vain?"
Gruffly he answers, "'Tis a sorry sight!
A seaman's body: there'll be more to-night!"
(CRABBE: _The Borough_, letter i. 1810.)
Crabbe's poems are the latest to use the strict Popean couplet for
narrative and descriptive purposes, and his couplets have a certain
characteristic reticence and vigor. Professor Woodberry praises them in
an interesting passage on "the old heroic rhymed couplet, that simplest
form of English verse music, which could rise, nevertheless, to the
almost lyric loftiness of the last lines of the _Dunciad_; so supple and
flexible; made for easy simile and compact metaphor; lending itself so
perfectly to the sudden flash of wit or turn of humor; the natural shell
of an epigram; compelling the poet to practice all the virtues of
brevity; checking the wandering fancy, and repressing the secondary
thought; requiring in a masterly use of it the employment of more mental
powers than any other metrical form; despised and neglected now because
the literature which is embodied in it is despised and neglected, yet
the best metrical form which intelligence, as distinct from poetical
feeling, can employ." (_Makers of Literature_, p. 104.)
The flower-beds all were liberal of delight:
Roses in heaps were there, both red and white,
Lilies angelical, and gorgeous glooms
Of wall-flowers, and blue hyacinths, and blooms
Hanging thick clusters from light boughs; in short,
All the sweet cups to which the bees resort;
With plots of grass, and leafier walks between
Of red geraniums, and of jessamine,
And orange, whose warm leaves so finely suit,
And look as if they shade a golden fruit;
And midst the flowers, turfed round beneath a shade
Of darksome pines, a babbling fountain played,
And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,
Which through the tops glimmered with showering light.
(LEIGH HUNT: _The Story of Rimini_. 1816.)
Of this poem Mr. C. H. Herford says: "_The Story of Rimini_ is the
starting-point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic
couplet, and of the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of
familiar turns, which Shelley in _Julian and Maddalo_ and Keats in
_Lamia_ made classical." (_Age of Wordsworth_, p. 83.) The treatment of
the couplet is still characterized by but slight use of run-on lines,
and a preference for the medial cesura; but on the other hand there is a
large degree of freedom in the inversion of accents and other
alterations of the regular stress. Compare the last line of the present
specimen, and such other lines as
"Of crimson cloths hanging a hand of snow."
"Some, with a drag, dangling from the cap's crest."
"'Who's there?' said that sweet voice, kindly and clear."
"The other with the tears streaming down both his cheeks."
The last of these lines, an alexandrine, is also characteristic. Hunt
imitated Dryden in the use of both alexandrine and triplet. Of the
latter he said: "I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the
triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It
has a look like the bridge of a lute." (Preface to _Works_, 1832.) Mr.
A. J. Kent, in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_, says of Leigh
Hunt that "he became the greatest master since the days of Dryden" of
the heroic couplet. (1881, p. 224.)
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
(KEATS: _Endymion_, ll. 1-24. 1818.)
In the couplet of Keats, and of a number of his successors, we have a
really different measure from the "heroic couplet" proper. The
individual line and the couplet alike cease to be prominent units of
the verse. The effect is therefore closely allied to that of blank
verse; the rimes, not being emphasized by marked pauses, serving rather
as means of tone color than as organizers of the verse. See Mr.
Saintsbury's remarks (quoted in the notes on Dryden, p. 195, above), on
"lines made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them." In like
manner Mr. Symonds says that "the couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher,
Shelley, and Keats follow the laws of blank verse, and add rhyme--that
is to say, their periods and pauses are entirely determined by the
sense." (_Blank Verse_, p. 66.) This is true of the couplets of Shelley
and Keats, and to a less degree of those of Fletcher's _Faithful
Shepherdess_, but will hardly apply to Marlowe, nor, as we have seen, to
the Elizabethans in general.[24]
There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn.
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not.
(SHELLEY: _Epipsychidion_, ll. 190-200. 1821.)
Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit.
The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so
irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this
passage:
"The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet
Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit
Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance."[25]
The woods were long austere with snow: at last
Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast
Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes,
Brightened, 'as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods
Our buried year, a witch, grew young again
To placid incantations, and that stain
About were from her caldron, green smoke blent
With those black pines'--so Eglamor gave vent
To a chance fancy. When a just rebuke
From his companion; brother Naddo shook
The solemnest of brows; 'Beware,' he said,
'Of setting up conceits in nature's stead.'
(BROWNING: _Sordello_, ii. 1-12. 1840.)
Above the stem a gilded swallow shone,
Wrought with straight wings and eyes of glittering stone
As flying sunward oversea, to bear
Green summer with it through the singing air.
And on the deck between the rowers at dawn,
As the bright sail with brightening wind was drawn,
Sat with full face against the strengthening light
Iseult, more fair than foam or dawn was white.
Her gaze was glad past love's own singing of,
And her face lovely past desire of love.
Past thought and speech her maiden motions were,
And a more golden sunrise was her hair.
The very veil of her bright flesh was made
As of light woven and moonbeam-colored shade
More fine than moonbeams; white her eyelids shone
As snow sun-stricken that endures the sun,
And through their curled and colored clouds of deep
Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep,
Shone as the sea's depth swallowing up the sky's
The springs of unimaginable eyes.
(SWINBURNE: _Tristram of Lyonesse; the Sailing of the Swallow_.)
The huge high presence, red as earth's first race,
Reared like a reed the might up of his mace,
And smote: but lightly Tristram swerved, and drove
Right in on him, whose void stroke only clove
Air, and fell wide, thundering athwart: and he
Sent forth a stormier cry than wind or sea
When midnight takes the tempest for her lord;
And all the glen's throat seemed as hell's that roared;
But high like heaven's light over hell shone Tristram's sword,
Falling, and bright as storm shows God's bare brand
Flashed, as it shore sheer off the huge right hand
Whose strength was as the shadow of death on all that land.
(_Ibid._: _The Last Pilgrimage_.)
It will be noticed that in Swinburne's use of the couplet the single
line is even less the unit of measure than in Keats and Shelley; the
periods correspond closely to those in the blank verse of Milton and
Tennyson. Compare the specimens of blank verse on pp. 230 and 245. The
second specimen shows the occasional use of the triplet and
alexandrine.
So stood she murmuring, till a rippling sound
She heard, that grew until she turned her round
And saw her other sisters of the deep
Her song had called while Hylas yet did sleep,
Come swimming in a long line up the stream,
And their white dripping arms and shoulders gleam
Above the dark grey water as they went,
And still before them a great ripple sent.
But when they saw her, toward the bank they drew,
And landing, felt the grass and flowers blue
Against their unused feet; then in a ring
Stood gazing with wide eyes, and wondering
At all his beauty they desired so much.
And then with gentle hands began to touch
His hair, his hands, his closed eyes; and at last
Their eager naked arms about him cast,
And bore him, sleeping still, as by some spell,
Unto the depths where they were wont to dwell;
Then softly down the reedy bank they slid,
And with small noise the gurgling river hid
The flushed nymphs and the heedless sleeping man.
(WILLIAM MORRIS: _Life and Death of Jason_, iv. 621-641. 1867.)